Bonus Taste Test: Mint Crisp M&Ms and Wildly Cherry M&Ms

Due to popular demand and the fact that we love
trying weird foods and candies, The A.V. Club will now regularly feature "Taste
Tests." Feel free to suggest disgusting and/or delicious new edibles for future
installments: E-mail us at tastetest@theonion.com.

Mint Crisp M&Ms; and Wildly Cherry M&Ms;

Like so many other candy makers, the people behind
M&Ms; have been fucking with the formula lately. They think you're like an
old married couple, and that you require special gels, oils, and tastes to keep
things interesting. Are they right? I can't answer that. We
already told you about orange and "razzberry" M&Ms;, which
delighted some and bored others. In the last couple of months, though, a couple
more flavors have been introduced in an effort to woo you away from your
standard milk chocolate or peanut M&Ms.; Thus Wildly Cherry and the
brand-spanking-new Mint Crisp, the latter of which is tied to the new Indiana
Jones movie. (I can't wait for the big reveal, when Indy says, "The crystal
skull isn't made of crystal! It's made of mint!" And then he pops a couple of
M&Ms; into his mouth.) They may sound familiar—there have been mint
M&Ms; in the past, as well as crispy M&Ms;—but this appears to be a
new beast. The Wildly Cherry flavor seems a bit more flash-in-the-pan, the sexy
new partner you quickly realize you aren't that into.

Taste: Good news on both fronts, at least for the most
part. The Mint Crisp ones are both crispy and minty—they have a crunchy,
puffy center after you get past the layer of chocolate, and the mint itself is
very strong. (And minty!) The shapes vary pretty wildly, some bigger than
others and some strangely lumpy. And many have Indiana Jones-themed pictures on
them, like a temple, Indy's hat, etc. But everyone here agrees that they taste
like Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, which is a very, very good thing.
(Especially for Genevieve. The Girl Scouts had to put a restraining order on
her; see below.) The mint taste lasts a long time, too—a good thing in
this instance.

The Cherry flavor, on the other hand, got mixed
reactions. There obviously wasn't any attempt to make them taste like actual
cherries, so they taste something like those cheap, sugary cough drops mixed
with chocolate. I actually found them extremely tasty, but I was in the
minority. (I tend to favor fruit-and-chocolate combinations, though.) They're a
little too artificial to be sustainable in the candy marketplace, but they're a
tasty lark. The Mint Crisp ones—even though they claim limited-edition
status—could last.

Office reactions:

Wildly Cherry:

—"They're okay. The cherry taste is fairly
mild. They mostly just taste like M&Ms; with a cough-syrup aftertaste."

—"These taste like
cherry Tootsie Roll pops."

—"It's a really fake cherry
taste that isn't good, but isn't terrible. I don't think M&M;'s have gotten
the alternate-flavor thing right yet, judging by the mehness of orange,
raspberry, and now this."

Mint Crisp:

—"They taste like Junior Mints with a candy
shell and a Styrofoam center. They're way better than the cherry ones, but the
crunchy center is kind of a mood-killer for me. It's so obviously filler taking
up space that could have been spent on further minty deliciousness."

—"This is making up for the fact that I
couldn't find any Girl Scouts to steal Thin Mints from this year."

—"Mint plus chocolate is always
a winner, and the crunch in the middle is a bonus."

—"They're good. The only weird
thing is that I'm not sure where the candy shell ends and the chocolate mint
filling begins."

—"By far my favorite of the
alternately flavored M&M;'s."

—"I have no idea why these are
lumpy. Are those supposed to be from mint chunklets?"

—"The skull on mine is too
scary."

— "The mintiness is really sharp and
bold. But it makes me so thirsty."

Where to get them: We got the
mint at Walgreen's, and the cherry at Target.